


new cigar

by brideofquiet



Series: modern men [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: (sorry) (am i?) (no), Alpha Bucky Barnes, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Anal Sex, Arguing, Captain America: The First Avenger, Exes to Lovers, Fertility Issues, Implied Mpreg, Knotting, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Omega Steve Rogers, difficult conversations in compromised positions, if you really squint, some narrative debate over that point however
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 06:29:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21351763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brideofquiet/pseuds/brideofquiet
Summary: And now here this new Steve is on the warfront, just like the old one wanted so bad.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: modern men [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1539727
Comments: 58
Kudos: 430





	new cigar

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning I’m not solid on how to tag for: Bucky accuses Steve of changing designations and, despite knowing full well that he hasn’t, isn’t particularly kind about it.

It takes eleven days before they have a moment to themselves. Two hundred sixty-four hours—Bucky doesn’t mean to count them but he does. Truthfully, he’s had a few chances to get Steve by himself, if he’d really tried. Could’ve dragged him out of the makeshift camp and into the woods on the march back from Krausberg. Knocked down the door of his private room in London. Hell, Bucky could have grabbed him by the necktie at that damnable pub and shoved him out into the alleyway—Steve would have let him. At least, Bucky thinks so.

There’s a lot about Steve he’s not so sure about these days. But finally—sixteen thousand minutes later—they’re alone. 

Bucky can’t say which had been avoiding the other, or why. In the end, it’s Steve who takes him by the elbow and brings him back to his quarters after some strategy meeting breaks for lunch. Bucky has no idea what the meeting was about; his eyes had been on Steve, the same way they’ve been since he opened them on that gurney to find his omega looming over him like the bright blue sky.

The door closes behind them with a _ snick. _Steve lets him go, plodding ahead of him into the room with a sudden, palpable weariness. He sags against the far wall and pops the buttons of his four-pocket coat open.

Christ. How long’s it been since they’ve been alone together—together at all? Too long. Bucky can feel the prickling in the back of his brain, the _ that’s mine _ and the _ remind him, remind the world. _

Only Steve isn’t his anymore—never was in the legal sense, in the way that can’t be rescinded. They’d both made that damn well clear when Bucky returned home from his basic training. Steve hated that he hadn’t gone too, and leaving him along to fester in his hurt only made thing worse. He just wouldn’t leave it alone, wouldn’t give it the hell up when even the Omegas’ Army Auxiliary Corps didn’t want him. 

Rejection that bad made him see it everywhere, even in Bucky, who’d spent three-quarters of his life showing Steve he would never, ever dismiss him.

The war cracked their foundation before either of them left U.S. soil. It crumbled for good when, in the middle of their third shouting match that week, Steve threw Bucky’s newly issued pair of service shoes out the window and onto the street. 

Wartime made everybody tense, his mother said to him when he showed up at his family’s door, scuffed shoes in the bag over his shoulder. The two of them—well, they’d muddle through, she insisted. She and Bucky’s father had managed it. 

Bucky thought they might be able to salvage something when he returned from North Africa, on leave before he got dumped into Europe with a shiny new sergeant’s rank that only amounted to a bigger target on his back. Bucky couldn’t stand leaving again without seeing him. He didn’t mean to spend the night with him, hold Steve close in their bed with both their clothes and the sweat of the day still on, licking Steve’s neck till he cried. It was inevitable, though, the moment Steve opened the door for him; Bucky’s spent many cold nights since thinking about just why that is. In the morning Steve made coffee and pretended none of it had happened, shooing Bucky off to get his orders with a tight look on his face.

_ Easier this way, _ Bucky told himself. Maybe it was better they’d never bonded, so Steve wouldn’t have his middle scooped out like a fruit pit when Bucky inevitably got shot in the gut.

He thought the same thing in the factory when his unit was captured, when he caught that terrible bug, again when he got pulled back from the brink by a doctor who wasn’t really trying to cure him of the pneumonia: _ Better for Steve if he can’t feel it. _ If he heard by letter instead of the sudden, quiet snuffing out of the second candle burning in his core.

But then Steve waltzed in and picked Bucky up like it was nothing, smelling like himself but with a body that defied reason. _ I thought you were smaller, _ Bucky mumbled, then grabbed him by the collar and hauled him closer to be sure. He had to know. And there, at Steve’s throat, had been all the evidence Bucky ought to need: sharp-sweet citrus so familiar it damn near brought tears to his eyes to smell it again.

So Bucky followed him out of the factory, back to Italy, to London—and now, anywhere.

But the fact that Steve’s scent is unchanged doesn’t count for much, when the rest of him is so wholly unrecognizable. Maybe that’s why Bucky had stayed away even as he tallied up the hours.

“Bucky,” Steve says from where he’s standing across the room next to a sturdy desk with books and papers strewn across it. Always the books and papers, wherever he goes, like a breadcrumb trail. It’s a small room, all things considered, and Bucky supposes that makes sense. Not like there’s more space in London than there is in New York. The single-wide bed and the hum of the lamp almost make it homey.

“Buck,” Steve repeats.

“What?” Bucky asks, because Steve’s looking at him with hurt in his eyes all of a sudden. _ Fix it, help him, he’s yours. _ Bucky grits his teeth against the instinct to swarm him with comforts.

“I don’t know. Say something.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t—Jesus.” Steve scrapes both hands up his face and into his hair, ruining the smooth coiff. With his tie already loose at his neck, it’s the most undone Bucky’s seen him since they got to England. It’s the most he’s looked like himself. “Are you okay?”

“Am I okay?” Bucky cracks a smile, but it feels flat even to him. “‘M’not the one that switched designations overnight.”

That pulls Steve’s brow together, sudden understanding and disbelief at odds on his face. “Bucky. I’m still omega.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“Could I? Really? Scent me again, if you need the reminder.”

Bucky waves a dismissive hand at him—it was just a jab anyway. Steve’s selective hearing for jokes has been getting him in trouble as long as Bucky has known him. But beneath the dig, Bucky’s point still stands. Steve’s nearly tripled in size, shot up a foot and a hundred pounds like it’s nothing. He looks, for all the world to see, like an alpha. Prime damn breeding stock too. Beautiful, sure—breath stealing. But not the omega Bucky’s known his whole life. Not the one he fell in love with, took for a mate, would’ve bonded with if Steve had ever let him put his teeth into him.

And now here this new Steve is on the warfront, just like the old one wanted so bad.

It’s done, though. Permanent. No sense quibbling over it. Bucky has a few other questions besides.

“How’d you find me?” he says.

Steve crosses his arms and uncrosses them. The vacillation is so unlike him. “I could smell you,” he says. “Soon as I got near the place.”

Bucky’s brow raises, incredulous. “You’re no tracker.”

Someone with a nose sharp enough to trace others by smell for more than a city block or two—that’s rare. Scent is for intimacy, for friends and family and lovers. Bucky can smell Steve from across the ten-foot space between them, but that’s because he’s so tuned into it by now. Because he pays attention to the ripples and fluctuations in Steve’s scent to exception of all else, and has done for a decade now.

“I wasn’t.” Steve shrugs, and Bucky watches the way it makes his chest flex beneath the dress uniform. “A lot’s changed.”

Bucky laughs, derisive. The sound makes Steve set his jaw.

“What?” he barks.

“You don’t like me to cut my fuckin _ hair _ without telling you about it first,” Bucky says. “And then you go and—and—I mean, hell, Steve. Look at you.”

“If you’re looking for an apology, you’re not gonna get one.”

“No. I never do, do I?” 

He’s being mean, he knows it, but something in the set of Steve’s newly broad shoulders is making his blood boil. It shouldn’t, he knows it shouldn’t, but _ God— _

“I didn’t bring you here to pick a fight, so quit spoiling for one,” Steve says.

“Then why did you bring me here?”

“I just wanted to talk.” Steve frowns. “We haven’t—we haven’t had a chance to. Not really.”

“Talk.”

“Yeah, Buck, Jesus. That so far-fetched?”

Bucky points a finger at him. “You’re the one who shut me out first. Don’t make out like I should know better after that.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, “yeah, okay. If throwing that in my face when I’m trying to extend a hand to you makes you feel better, Bucky, go ahead and keep doing it.”

“I’ve got a right to still be angry about it.”

Steve’s lips press together. “I know you do. But you said you wanted to stay. Did you change your mind?”

He’d been drunk that night, and too bowled over from Steve’s closeness to be anything but sweet. Even under those circumstances, though, he wouldn’t lie about something like that. “Of course not.”

“Then why’re you being—” Steve waves a hand at him. “You’re mad about something. I can tell.”

“‘Course I’m _ mad.” _

“Then talk to me.”

“No.”

“You call me stubborn.” Steve’s feet plant on the floor, squaring him off as he assesses Bucky across the room. “You’re mad I’m not small anymore. That it? Not some runt you can bully into doing what you want now, am I?”

“Since _ when _ did you ever let me bully you into a damn thing? I ever so much as tried that, you would’ve spit in my face.”

The air pulls tight as piano wires. “I’ll do it right now. You deserve it.”

“Get over here then.”

Tension cracks the room in half, folding in on itself till Steve is slamming him backward into the door. “Shut up,” Steve says, low in his throat. “Stop talking. Why are you doing this?”

Bucky grabs him by the nape, tries to yank him off, but Steve’s too fucking _ big _ now. His body presses all over Bucky, one hand clamped on his shoulder while the other presses his hip into the wood behind him. The doorknob digs into the small of his back, but the pain’s no sharper than the way Bucky’s heart is throbbing. He growls, loud and aggressive. Steve just rattles him against the door and answers the sound with a rumbling of his own. He even _ sounds _ alpha—all that extra room in his chest for the growl to resonate.

“What are you gonna do, alpha?” Bucky says. He tries to kick up a knee, catch Steve in the groin, but Steve’s knocked his feet too far apart and is standing between them. Thinks of everything. “Gonna challenge me? Tear my throat out? Show em who you are now, sweetie. What they turned you into. ‘S’what you always wanted, isn’t it?”

“Fuck you,” Steve spits out, sliding his hand from Bucky’s shoulder to his neck. Shit, maybe he’ll really do it. The pressure against his windpipe makes him remember the table, strapped down and pleading. The stench of fear floods the room like a balloon popped, and Steve’s eyes go round.

“You could,” Bucky says before Steve can react to the odor. “Betcha got a big alpha cock now, huh? Go on, stick it in me—you’re strong enough to hold me down for it.”

_ “Dammit, _ Bucky.” 

Steve drops him as fast as he’d grabbed hold. In seconds he’s on the other side of the room again, hands on his hips and panting. His face is flushed, pointed toward the floor. But it’s not anger—no. Bucky smells something sweet in the room now, a familiar punch to the gut. The faint smell of Steve’s arousal.

“That got you hot,” he says. “Thinking about fucking me.”

Steve’s eyes cut to him, and there’s the anger. “Don’t be flattered. I’m a hairline trigger these days—it’s the serum.”

“That all it is?”

“Buck,” Steve warns, but Bucky’s already stalking toward him across the room. Steve greets him with extended arms, grabbing his shoulders to stop him, but Bucky keeps plowing forward even with the resistance. Steve can throw him off if he wants him to stop—toss him like a sack of onions without so much as raising his heart rate. Steve’s hands dig into the meat of his shoulders hard enough to leave marks, but Bucky keeps fighting him, trying to get closer.

“Come on,” Bucky says. “I’m asking you for it, Steve.”

A growl rips out of Steve’s chest, and his hands push hard enough to send Bucky stumbling backward onto the bed. He lands flat on his back. Steve crowds between his knees where they’re splayed over the edge of the mattress, looming over him, his cheeks full of color. His hands skim over Bucky’s thighs, higher and higher. The touch sends great bright heat all over him.

“You don’t want what you’re asking for,” Steve says.

It’s uncalled for, egging Steve on like this, acting like it’s some unholy subversion for Steve to lay him out that way—as if he hasn’t before. But something cut the wires between Bucky’s mouth and his compassionate mind.

“Sure I want it,” he says.

“Why are you so angry? Huh? What’s wrong?”

“Not angry—c’mere.” He grabs Steve by the tie and hauls him down. Steve’s hands shoot out to hold himself up just in time to keep him from collapsing on top of Bucky. “Come on, it’s on offer, take it.”

_ “Stop _ it.” Steve yanks Bucky’s wrist from his tie and pins it to the mattress. “I’m not your goddamn alpha, Bucky.”

“Look at you, of course you are, you’re—”

He’s not expecting the slap. Steve’s palm smacks open-handed across his cheek hard enough to knock his head sideways into the quilts. He gasps with the shock of it, a hot stinging sensation blooming all over the side of his face. His eyelids flutter at the ache. Steve’s never hit him before, not with anything behind it, not hard enough to matter. His jaw works until it pops.

“Shit,” he mutters. “Warn a guy, Rogers.”

But Steve doesn’t answer him. A soft double thud on the hardwood seems to shake the room. Bucky sits up, head still spinning, and finds Steve kneeling on the floor at his feet. When he knows he’s been spotted, Steve tips his head back and bares his throat.

It’s an act of utter submission, plain and simple—and something Steve has never, ever done. Not for him, not for _ anyone, _ not once in his life. The shock of seeing it makes Bucky damn near choke.

“What are you doing?” he asks, voice low.

“Showing you,” Steve says. A rough swallow sends a tremor down the column of Steve’s pale throat. “Since you won’t listen to me.”

“Showing me,” Bucky repeats.

Steve’s chin reaches higher in the air, his throat a perfect arch like he’s been practicing, like he’s done this a thousand times. He hasn’t—he wouldn’t. Maybe it’s instinct.

“I’m still me. Still omega. Yours.”

Part of it isn’t the truth, but which part? He sets a hand at the base of Steve’s throat, and Steve only arches his head further back, giving Bucky more—giving him everything. Steve’s smell floods his open mouth, the way it does when Steve’s heart beats harder because he’s desperate. Bucky can see his pulse striking like bass drums in his neck, can feel it when he slips his thumb over Steve’s carotid. Even his heart is noticeably, stunningly stronger.

“You don’t submit to me,” Bucky says.

Steve’s eyes flash open. “I will if I have to.”

“You hate this, though.”

“Don’t tell me what I feel,” Steve snarls. His chin drops, protecting his throat again, and he grabs Bucky by the belt. “Did you mean it?”

“What?”

“About wanting me to fuck you.”

“I’m—I don’t…”

“Good,” Steve says, popping open the buttons of Bucky’s trousers. “Good, because I need you inside me.”

“Fuck,” Bucky gasps. His hand tightens around Steve’s neck instinctively, and Steve hisses and snaps teeth at his wrist till he lets him go. Then he’s yanking Bucky’s trousers off, his underpants too, and his shoes when it all gets caught around his ankles. Steve is off his knees as quickly as he landed on them, stripping fast enough that he blurs. Even so, once he’s naked, Bucky can’t help but fall back to his elbows.

“Holy shit.”

“I could wreck you,” Steve tells him, standing there with his muscled chest, his sturdy thighs, the thick pink cock hanging between them. All that’s missing is the loose skin of an unformed knot at its base. “Dominate you. But I don’t want to. Do you get it yet?”

And that’s the thing—Steve always could have had Bucky any which way he wanted him, even when he was tiny. Had Bucky wrapped around his goddamn pinky finger long before they got undressed together. Steve never submitted, not in the ways that’d be called proper, and Bucky never asked him to—but if Bucky held on to him a little too tight, Steve would moan a little louder. If Bucky roughed him up now and then, Steve smiled bigger for three days. He might not want to prostrate himself on the floor for Bucky to do with as he pleases, but down to his bone marrow he’s still an omega. Always has been.

That much is delightfully obvious when Steve grabs Bucky’s hand and guides it between his cheeks, so he can feel him. “You ever had an alpha get wet for your dick like that?”

“No,” he says dimly, even though Steve wasn’t really asking, because he knows the answer—knows that he’s the only one Bucky’s ever been with. A low, possessive rumble kicks up in Bucky’s throat as he palms between Steve’s thighs. He pulls at the soft skin, stretching it, letting the wet slide over and between his fingers. The pad of his thumb finds Steve’s hole and circles it.

Steve shifts his stance wider and sighs, “Bucky.”

“You’ll let me inside?” Bucky asks, to confirm. Usually it’s Bucky asking for it this way. “Want me in you?”

“Yes, I—yes. It’s been… I don’t know, what they did to me, it’s—I need you.”

Bucky’s eyes flick up to his face, where Steve is staring at him, wrenched open like weak hinges in a storm. He lets his thumbnail catch on Steve’s rim before pulling his hand away.

“Come here,” he says. “Lie down. On your back—there.”

When Steve settles on the pillows and plants his feet, thighs spread wide, his scent erupts into the room strong enough to burn out Bucky’s very memory of anything other than orange and grapefruit. Bucky inhales deep to coat his lungs with it. Maybe, if he hauls in enough of the smell, it’ll linger forever. He wouldn’t mind.

As he crawls between Steve’s legs, Steve throws an elbow over his face and whines. _ Shy, _ Bucky thinks, _ what’s making him shy? _“Steve,” he says, gripping his forearm, “sweetheart. You look at me when I fuck you.”

Steve shudders but drops his arm, lets Bucky see his shining eyes. The lamplight flickers—power’s on the fritz—while Bucky grips Steve behind the knee to force his leg higher. The angle gives him better access, lets him rub his cock right there where Steve is wet and needy for him. He can feel Steve’s body instinctively trying to get hold of him every time his cockhead passes over his hole.

“Patience,” he says, while Steve’s teeth set around a hiss. “You trust me. Don’t you?”

“Yes,” Steve huffs. “Alpha—more than anyone.”

Bucky rewards his loyalty. He lines himself up and pushes forward, slipping a few inches into Steve, who gasps and tosses his head back like Bucky’s just given him all of it.

“Fuck,” Steve sighs, and rocks his hips like he’s looking for more. 

“Shh. Greedy. I told you, I have you.”

“You do, you do—”

“Then _ let _ me,” Bucky growls and wraps his hand neatly around Steve’s throat again—a hollow warning, since Steve’s now capable of not just throwing him off but throwing him across the room. 

But Steve swallows roughly under his touch, eyes wide, and nods. His body just _ melts _ into it when Bucky pushes his chin up, slide an inch deeper between his legs. Steve hums and gasps, and from the look in his eyes it’s not without effort, but he lets all the fight pour out and dissipate into the hot air between them. His legs spread wider, inviting Bucky in, and his hammering heart nails his scent into Bucky’s nose like he intends to make it a permanent fixture in there.

Steve’s eyes stay open, on him, blinking softly. His neck is bare and vulnerable under Bucky’s fingers, but he tilts his head even further back. He submits himself.

If Bucky were anyone else, he’d have lost it—grabbed his hips and fucked like it was gonna kill him if he didn’t put his dick in Steve, put a baby in him. If it were anyone other than Steve, who doesn’t do this, who doesn’t give himself to Bucky like this, like he expects no part will be returned.

Something cold that had lodged in Bucky’s heart shatters. He feels it, whimpers, then covers Steve with his body like he can hide him and hold him all at once. It drives his cock in to the hilt, but God it feels almost inconsequential. He opens his mouth over Steve’s chest and kisses him there, and does it again—Christ, all over, wet and open and _ thankful. _ His hips grind while he licks Steve’s neck till it shines. It’s an old gesture. One that says _ I have you, thank you, wow. _

“Bucky,” Steve grates out, “please, it’s okay—give it to me, won’t you? I’m being good, I deserve it.”

Bucky’s fingers dig into Steve’s jaw as he pulls out and pushes back in, fresh and slow. “You’re always good, sweetie.”

“‘M’not, not always, don’t listen to you, don’t give you what you want—”

“No.” He presses in deep enough Steve’s breath stutters and shakes. “You’re all I want.”

“I’m sorry, God, Buck, I’m sorry.”

“Shh—shh, don’t I have you? I’ll tell you again.”

He fucks Steve hard and unhurried, dropping his grip on Steve’s neck to cup both hands beneath his hips and hold him up. Steve’s body clutches him close, and Steve’s hands pull him closer, fingers buried in his hair and scratching up his back. They haven’t done this in—what, months? Months and months, a whole pile of them, not since that hurried midnight tryst before Bucky shipped out for Europe, the one that left both of them half-satisfied and sad in the morning.

This, though—this is good.

Steve isn’t little under him anymore, but maybe Bucky doesn’t mind that as much as he thought he did. More to grab, and grab harder because he doesn’t hurt so easily now. No, now when Bucky digs his nails into the crease of Steve’s ass, inches from where he’s splitting him open, Steve just gasps and says, “Please, please, _ oh—” _

He gets so delirious with Bucky’s dick in him, but Bucky wants to test just how desperate he is. He seizes Steve by the waist and flips them so his back hits the sheets and Steve is spread out above him like an angel on the ceiling of the Sistine fuckin Chapel. Christ, he forgot how weepy this man makes him.

“Bucky,” Steve complains. His cock slipped out when he rolled them.

“Come on, Steve, you want it? Show me, sweetie—I’ll help, I promise.”

Steve’s whole front, hairline to thighs, has pinked up like fresh summer sunburn. He rubs himself over Bucky, folding forward to press their foreheads together. He reaches behind himself and grips Bucky’s cock. His face is so close Bucky feels the hot gasp of air when Steve fits Bucky back between his legs, back inside him. Bucky lets his eyes close while Steve hums out shocked noises, his hips rocking to find friction. Steve’s lips are open against his cheek. Bucky could hold him still, kiss his mouth—he wants to. As much as he’s missed this, the messy mortar and pestle of a grinding fuck, he thinks on his worst day he missed Steve’s kisses more than anything else. But this is just sex, he tells himself. Just two bodies coming together again, animalistic and instinctual. Despite all their tender words, kissing Steve right now would make this into something it’s not and can’t be. Not here, not now.

His skin so close is always twelve kinds of temptation. Bucky’s teeth ache with wanting to mark him. _ That, _ though, he can’t— 

He has to put his energy somewhere, so he grabs Steve’s thighs to still him and digs his heels into the cardboard mattress. After the first few snaps of his hips, he readjusts his hold, trying to keep Steve from writhing right out of his lap.

“Too much?” he asks.

“No, no, it’s a lot, but I…” Steve sentence fades into a moan, higher than somebody might think he was capable of, especially now. He sits up just a little, just enough to get a hold on himself and yank. His hand is trembling enough, it probably isn’t easy.

“That’s it,” Bucky says, pushing up into him rough and quick. Despite the ways Steve’s body has changed, the things that get him off seem the same. “There you go, sweetheart. Come on, I know you’re close.”

Like he’d been waiting on the invitation, Steve grows tight and tense on top of him. His eyes are closed, but when Bucky reaches up to cup his cheek and murmur his name, they flash open. Steve comes hard enough Bucky can see it in his eyes, hazy and half-lidded. He spills onto Bucky’s stomach with a punched-out sigh.

“Can I—” Bucky starts, thrusting once. Steve’s body jolts and clamps down hard, craving.

“Yes,” he says, “yeah, Buck.”

Bucky turns them again, gentler this time, and Steve’s legs splay open easy for him. He scoops the wet off dripping off his stomach and wipes it on his cock. Steve is warm and accepting when he drives back into him—clenching, looking for something Bucky hasn’t given yet. His knot. It’s forming, catching on Steve’s rim each time Bucky pushes and pulls in him.

God, it’d be reckless. He’s already fucking his new CO—probably shouldn’t tie him too. Anybody could walk in and find them compromised. 

Like Steve can see it on his face, his brow pinches and he says, “Buck, maybe we—”

But it’s too late. His dick swells and Steve’s body reflexively locks around him, and that’s it; they’re tied together face to face on this flimsy twin bed. Steve goes glassy-eyed and comes again from the sheer pressure in his channel, and it’s his choked little gasps that shove Bucky roughly over the cliff edge. His release pours out and into Steve and it feels so good it aches, right down to his bones.

“Sorry,” he breathes into Steve’s throat, where his scent blooms brightest thanks to his thundering, steady heart. Bucky’s own richer smell crescendos possessively in concert—he’s the one who satisfied this omega. Even so, his rational mind knows: “Shouldn’t have.”

“No, we shouldn’t,” Steve says, but his voice is still reedy; his body is still humming with energy. He yelps when Bucky swirls his hips. “You’re a menace.”

“Mm. You like it.”

“Hell, Bucky.” Steve lets out a ragged breath, his hand coming up to pet at the sweaty nape of Bucky’s neck. When Bucky licks his throat and shoves himself impossibly deeper, Steve hisses and pinches his shoulder hard. “Stop, Buck, you gotta—you have to stay still.”

They’ll untie faster if he does. Probably for the best, even if his brain is singing at him _ breed, claim, yours. _ Which reminds him—

“Hey,” he says, propping himself up on his elbows. Steve’s strong-jawed face peers up at him. “They got you on something?”

They ought to have been more careful. Steve isn’t in season, but it’s still possible. Rare as hell, but Bucky’s heard of it. According to his mother, it happened to his second cousin, which is why she’s bonded and living out in Jersey these days. He and Steve never could afford the hormonal contraceptives, but maybe the army shelled out.

Steve’s gaze drifts to the ceiling above. Between them, his hand presses to his abdomen briefly, then drops away. 

“Buck,” he says. “That doesn’t really matter with me. You know that.”

“Oh. Guess I figured, way your heart sounds, all this would have fixed… well.”

“They don’t think so. Or, well—maybe it helped whatever was wrong before, but it created new problems. Something about my cell growth rate. I didn’t listen close.”

Some small, half-formed hope dies in Bucky’s chest. “Did you know that going in? The risks?”

“Buck…”

Of course he hadn’t known—probably hadn’t asked. May not have been given the opportunity, frankly, if Bucky’s own experience with the U.S. Army is anything to go by. Steve shifts underneath him, jostling the tie enough to make them both whine a little. Normally they would have adjusted by now, gotten Steve in Bucky’s lap so Steve could breathe properly. But Bucky’s weight draped over him doesn’t seem like it’s a bother, now.

“Are you still mad?” Steve asks softly. 

Bucky sighs and lets himself think. There’s still so much on the table. “I don’t know, Steve.”

“Don’t be. Please. I’d have told you if I could—too classified.”

“Would you have?”

“Jesus. Yes.”

He shoves Bucky shoulder like he wants him away, but of course that’s not possible. They tumble over till they’re on their sides, one of Steve’s legs caught awkwardly beneath both of Bucky’s, the other slung over his hip. The movement pulls at the knot, and suddenly Bucky’s acutely aware of how close he is again—how if Steve would only let him, he could fill him again, make him purr soft and low.

As it is, Steve’s glaring at him from close confines, vulnerable and fierce all at once. Bucky keeps still. 

“Maybe I got a lot to apologize to you for, but this” —Steve taps his own chest— “will not be one of them.”

“Okay,” Bucky says. He replaces Steve’s hand on his chest with his own, stroking the baby-smooth skin. “Fine. Growing on me anyway, I guess.”

“That so?” Steve wears a fond half-smile that does something to Bucky’s insides. Pulverizes them.

“Yeah. Can it.”

“Secret’s safe with me.”

Steve is smirking, but Bucky frowns up at him. “Is it, you think? A secret.”

The humor fades from Steve’s eyes. When he talks, it’s almost to himself. “What you said—why you were angry. They’ve been letting people believe it. Unless somebody knows better, it _ is _ believable.”

“That you’re alpha,” Bucky says. It’s not a question.

“Easier that way, I guess.” 

Steve hums softly in the back of his throat, well used to swallowing the way the world treats him because of his designation. Spits it back up, sometimes. This is different, though; if he keeps the lie down, he gets what he wants. He can do good. So maybe his dignity is a small price to pay. For whatever it’s worth, Bucky is glad that so long as he’s here, it isn’t just as cannon fodder.

With a sigh, Steve touches his fingertips to Bucky’s jaw. “Even barring all that, though—there’s rules, Buck.”

“What rules? You hate rules.”

“Not if I understand em,” Steve says. “You know this one, c’mon. Bonded pairs can’t serve in the same unit.”

It’s considered dangerous—the idea being that, in a dire situation, the pair will forsake their unit to save each other. Technically the law wasn’t written for the two of them; omegas only serve in the non-combative OAAC. But Steve had checked the wording himself a year or two ago just in case, and it’s airtight, like somebody knew this would happen someday.

A point remains, though: he and Steve aren’t bonded.

“Doesn’t apply here,” Bucky says.

Steve’s eyes flick upward, almost a roll. “May as well, for how everybody else would see it.”

“Are you saying you would?” Bucky asks. His hand finds Steve’s neck and lies flat against it, Steve’s pulse against his palm. His own heart rate picks up—Steve’s never wanted this. “That you’d let me, now.”

“Doesn’t matter anyway.”

“Bullshit it doesn’t, Steve. It matters to me.”

“We _ can’t, _ Bucky—Jesus, don’t pull this again.”

“Pull what?” Steve tries to turn his face away, but Bucky just cuffs his ear and holds him steady against the pillows. “You think I like having you pummel my heart every time I bring it up? No, I don’t, but Steve, if there’s even a chance you changed your mind, I gotta—”

“Please, come on, are we still fighting?”

“Guess so.”

“No.” Steve’s hand covers Bucky’s on his face, and he shifts in closer, till they’re competing for the same breaths. His face has gone pink and intense. “Bucky, look, if we… When we’ve done what we came here to do, when all this is over—when we’re home.” He sucks in a breath. “I’ll think about it. Alright?”

“You’ll think.”

“Yes, God—I’m sorry, Buck, but that’s the best answer I can give you right now. You’re gonna have to live with it.”

His eyes are honest. Hell, Steve’s whole self is never anything but true—he’s not bullshitting Bucky. He means it. It’s the closest thing to a yes Steve has ever given. What he feels isn’t quite joy, but maybe it’s its runt cousin, a tentative optimism.

“Okay,” Bucky breathes. “I’ll live.”

“Good,” Steve says, smiling faintly. “I want you to. Important to me, you living.”

“But before then.”

Steve’s smile turns melancholy. “We shouldn’t do this again. Too much of a risk.”

Bucky presses close, his nose tucked behind Steve’s ear. “I know.” He wouldn’t willingly jeopardize Steve’s position, despite all his reservations about how he came by it. Would never betray him that way. “So long as you know whose you are.”

“Mmm.”

“Steve.” Bucky’s lip twitches. “You do know? Might be kind of you to say it, given.”

“Buck,” Steve says, snorting.

“This about that Carter?” he asks, half a joke—half meaning it.

“Hey.” Steve takes him by the chin. “I like her. You—you, I love. I’m yours, Buck. Always have been.”

Finishing what they started will hurt him later, when he’s lying in the barracks surrounded by the sleeping sounds of soldiers. But for now it’s easy as anything to let Steve roll him over, to meet his hungry kisses and swiveling hips. It takes just minutes to wring another round out of them both, and Steve pants and coos and apologizes for everything, even the parts he said he wasn’t sorry for, from up above him. Bucky sucks bruises into his skin that will be gone in an hour, murmuring _ I know, me too, of course I love you, you dolt. _For a while everything feels as simple as it had been before the world got in the way. For just a few minutes, Bucky can imagine them home again.

When they’re done and separated, pulling their clothes back on, Steve reels him in by the shirt collar for one more kiss. This one is slow, savoring, like the last bite of something sweet.

Later, in the hallway by himself with Steve’s smell still rich in his nose, he thinks for the first time in a long time that he might actually make it out of this war alive.


End file.
